How long will AMD continue to make CPU's the way they do?

[mikef208]

The "way" I am speaking about, is making thier top of the line chip, then hacking the L2 cache about 3/4 and calling it a value chip? While i have no problems with this process i was just curious as to how long it would be used. Also does intel do the same thing?

 

[ledzepp98]

yes, intel does the same thing...it's called the celeron. it seems like amd will continue to do this at least through the palomino line

 

[mikef208]

Yeah i know what the celeron is, but i was just wondering if they were made the same way. I mean is the celeron the exact same as the Pentium chips only with less cahce? i didn't think it was, but I was not sure

 

[ViRGE]

The Duron/Tbird is different from the Celeron/P3 combo in two ways. First, the Duron isn't a neutured Tbird like the Celeron is a neutured P3. Instead, the Duron is a similar, but different core. Intel litterally disables half the L2 cache to make a Celeron from a P3; but that costs the Celeron 128K of L2 cache, and brings the associativity down from 8way to 4way, which hurts performance more. The Duron, on the other hand, is just a Tbird not made with as much L2 cahce(64K instead of 256K). The associativity isn't cut at all, so it doesn't take the performance hit in that department.

 

[RaynorWolfcastle]

From what I understand, the Celeron is basically a pIII that had a defective portion of L2 cache. So Intel fuses the half of the L2 cache where the defect was located and calls it a Celeron. Maybe pm or Wingznut could give you more detail about what they do exactly.

-Ice

 

[nortexoid]

ice is wrong, virge is right....

i assume they'll keep this method up for a very long time..and introducing the chips at lower clock speeds as well...

is there really any other easy way to come out w/ a value chip?